Across the way are a dozen Mexicans, wrapped in greasy old blankets,
sitting like four-and-twenty blackbirds all in a row. I know their
faces, and have not missed one in a month. They live in condition
of body and mind hard for an American to realize. A kind of present
existence, without loving reference to the past; a passive waiting for
the future, without an inquiry or a wish, a fear or a hope. Small,
lank, dark-brown fellows; eight with high cheek-bones and thick
lips, betraying Indian blood; hair long, straight, black; eyes dark,
suspicious, wavering; habitually silent; when speaking, with gloomy
indifference, in a voice sad as memory. Elsewhere they would go as
tramps; but tramping is a grand fatigue. They prefer to sit round,
instead.
It is said this is the bearing of every conquered race; but such is
the average Mexican wherever he is found. About the hill of royal
Chapultepec, at the base of the pyramid of Cholula--last vestige of
Aztecan grandeur--he basks in the sun with the chameleons and lizards,
docile in temper, patient under abuse, idle as the wind that lifts his
long, black locks. Think you such men care for advantages, natural or
political--They know the joy of a splendid destiny fulfilled or the
anguish of such a destiny lost? They come of brave blood--Spaniard,
Moor, Indian--and how well they fight for their own, the United States,
France, and Austria may testify; but to us never did life appear so
empty, aimless, and joyless as the life of these sitters in the sun.
The puzzling question of to-day is: How do they keep soul and body
together? Let us find one in his home, if the dingy den he inhabits may
be called by that dear name. Leaving the Plaza, where vagrants most do
congregate, we pass the cottages of “the military” (on whose heads be
the blessing of those who entertain strangers), cross a sandy _arroya_,
through which in the rainy season a mountain torrent sweeps roaring.
Westward the straggling suburb stretches toward the foothills, and,
stumbling along a stony path, we suddenly come up against a wall. It
is about six feet high, made of mud mixed with ashes, coal, cow-horns,
hoofs, mule-bones, barrel-hoops, the wheels of a baby-wagon, cans,
broken bottles, boots, curry-combs, every refuse substance that may
swell the mass in a treeless region. The top of the wall bristles with
scraps of tin, which make it hard to climb. I doubt if Romeo would try
it, even to seize the white wonder of Juliet’s hand. The gate is made
of upright posts of dwarf cedar, thick as a man’s wrist, bound together
by rawhide strings, and groans and creaks in a dismal note as we push
it on wooden hinges. Not a trace of iron is to be seen.
This formidable outwork encloses three puppies, of the breed called
cast-iron, which look like magnified rats and act wonderfully like
cats. The proprietor of the estate and his spouse, in the doorway, sit
in the artistic pose called squat, at leisure profound, if not elegant.
He is evidently made of the same clay as his wretched mud shanty; might
have sprouted up from the ground or dropped down from the eaves.
As we enter, they rise in unembarrassed politeness. He removes his
slouch of a hat with decorous gravity, and the wife entreats us to
enter, saying, with the air of a princess in exile, we do her great
honor. The Spanish flavor is strong here, which may be the reason she
wears dragging bright calicoes all the year, and sits in the door even
when the snow falls. Her raven black hair and large, full eyes hint of
by-gone beauty; but it is by-gone. Premature wrinkles are worn deep by
the shriveling wind, her skin is swart and sunburnt, and the roses in
her cheek are only ashes of roses.
“Would she give us a drink of water?”
“With much pleasure, _Señora_.”
She diffuses an air of elegance over her pink calico toilet by throwing
a dreary old black shawl round her head; and, scorning to lift her
voluminous train (twelve yards for a dollar), hastens to the nearest
_acequia_, or irrigating ditch, fills a mug of Indian pottery, and
offers it with sweetness and grace. No new country exuberance about
her, nor revelling imagination, like Dick Swiveller’s; but a power of
enchantment and a lofty self-poise which no surprise can startle or
disturb. It is found alike in splendor or in squalor, the “grand air”
of Old Spain, descended to all who have a dash of her blood.
My hostess regrets the water is not wine, and so catching is the fine
charm that, ensnared and deluded, I am hardly sure it is not wine,
and drink their health in the miserable ditch-water and am cheered
by responsive _gracias_. I try to explain that I am under silken
bonds--ribbons red, blue, white--not to look upon wine when it is
red; but it is their first hearing of temperance, and they do not
understand. She invites me to a seat on the _colchon_--a wool mattress
folded against the wall and covered with a blanket, which serves the
double purpose of bed by night and sofa by day, an Oriental custom,
come down to them from the Moors. I excuse myself, being in mortal fear
of old settlers in the mattress. There a lovely baby, with no dress to
speak of, is tossing up its heels. I ask some questions, thinking of
bright eyes far away; and she prettily says baby has no year yet, and
her name is Lola Juanita Eloisa.
The earthen floor is swept with a bunch of broom, without handle,
leaning against the mud fireplace in the corner of the room. There
are no andirons, shovel, or tongs, and when fire is made the wood is
placed on end against the back of the fireplace. A chest, a few pieces
of crockery on a pine table, complete the furniture. Can you imagine
love in such a cottage? Undoubtedly there is love, and in the poorest
_jacal_ there is no brawling man, scolding, slapping wife, or crying
baby. If the walls crack, they are daubed by Magdalena Rosalia with a
fresh plaster of _yeso_, or gypsum, put on with a glove of sheepskin.
If the outside flakes and cracks too badly, it is smeared with a new
coating of soft mud. In the spring the ground floor has another layer
of clay, the fireplace a thin coating of _tierra amarilla_, or yellow
wash, and house-cleaning is ended. Does the roof leak, a dab of mud is
slapped on. Is the outer wall in holes, a lump of clay will stop the
wind away. There is no window, and when the door is closed the house
must be dark and stifling as a dungeon. Above the fireplace, done in
hectic chromo and framed in tin is a copy of the divine Madonna in
the Louvre, named “Queen of Heaven”; a band of blue stars across her
forehead, a tinsel crescent under her feet. Hanging below it is a
plaster crucifix, under glass. When the bell chimes, Magdalena Rosalia
will seek the old cathedral, whose vaulted interior is filled with
shadows and silence--among them a few figures, motionless as the dead
asleep under the floors--say her prayers across the rosary, confess,
and be absolved. But Trinidad Gonzalez Ribera, in the gauzy blanket and
vanishing pantaloons, will sit dozing in the sun, deaf to the ringing
music, unmindful of bell, book, or candle. I pass from under the
hospitable mud roof with repeated _adios_ and a feeling of unreality.
I look for a garden. There is none. There are no chickens, no pig, no
cow, no grass within the gravelly enclosure.
The only sign of life is a famished donkey, browsing on the strip of
grass which borders the _acequia_ by the roadside. He is the property
of our new friends, and occasionally the man of many names takes him
to the mountains, loads him with limbs of dead _piñones_, and sells
them for twenty-five cents a backload. Stopping on the plain, he digs
a few roots of _amolé_, or soap-weed; the _yucca aloifolia_, which we
cultivate for its rich cream-white blossoms. This is for the washing
done by Magdalena Rosalia.
Do not think she briskly knocks so early Monday morning or comes Sunday
night for the clothes, as wicked Protestants have been known to do.
No; this daughter of a proud line will not shame her high ancestry by
vulgar haste. She saunters along about noon, seats herself at ease,
makes affectionate inquiries as to every member of the household, with
a gift of continuance and native talent for rigmarole which would
do honor to a legislative body. She deliberately ties the bundle of
clothes, balances it on her head, and departs with sweeping courtesy
and majestic flirt of pink calico train.
After walking a few blocks, she stops for a rest, adjusts her bundle
into a cushion on the ground, takes from her pocket a little package of
corn-husks, fills one with fine-cut tobacco from a paper box, rolls it
into a _cigarrito_, and enjoys a smoke. A Monday picture in Santa Fé
is the long row of wash-women, with the everlasting black shawls over
their heads, sitting in the shade of mud walls, quietly gossiping and
smoking. To get the clothes home is exertion enough for one day.
Tuesday she repairs to the Rio Santa Fé weakened by irrigating ditches
to a shallow brook, and on its sandy bank makes a little fire for
washing. Her machine is one bucket and a square tin box. She pounds the
clothes between two stones. Flannels full, buttons fly, embroideries
are a dream of things that were. She boils them in the box, set on
granite; rinses in the pure snow-water of the Rio; and spreads them on
the rocks to dry, as the young Roman girls do along the Tiber. Friday,
in comes Magdalena Rosalia, with all beautifully white, folded in an
Indian basket shaped like a deep saucer.
The proceeds of this labor buy a bag of blue corn-meal and the
necessary tobacco. Twice a week they can afford a stew of _chili con
carne_ (our old friend hash, made fiery hot with red pepper) and the
living is made. As respects worldly goods, come he soon or late, Death
will find this pair exactly as they entered life, exactly as their
fathers lived and died, in the peaceful depths of contented poverty.
Magdalena Rosalia walks as though she was born in the purple, to
live like the lilies who toil not neither do they spin; and Trinidad
Gonzalez Ribera is free of care as though his old Navajo blanket was
a king’s coronation robe. At the grave’s edge it not unfrequently
happens that his mourning friends, too poor to spare his blanket, strip
it from his body, and lay him away in the dust from whence he sprung,
shroudless and uncoffined.
These are the happy people sighed for by weary poets in all the ages.
Simple souls who love the sun, live close to Nature, and in the dirt
house, to which nothing is added, where nothing is repaired except
by additional dirt, are serene as summer, filled with a measureless
content. Can we say so much for the eager, ambitious conqueror in a
struggle, a battle, and a race; always getting ready to live, looking
to the future when he may have time to rest and enjoy?
The Mexican does not wait for better times. There is no day but this.
He begins now and the future takes care of itself.
Oh! tired woman of “the States,” running on your nerve, trying to do
all the public demands of you and all you require of yourself, leave
the place where the door bell rings every half hour. Quit worrying
over goose-parties for the Sunday-school, Jarley’s wax-works for the
firemen; slip away from strawberry parties for the Gaboon Mission;
slacken the fevered rush; loosen the strings at concert pitch and ready
to snap; go to the Mexican woman, consider her ways, and learn how to
rest.
Of course, you, my precious reader, know many things she does not.
There never has been a woman’s meeting in this territory of 207,000
square miles; and, in consequence, the weak-minded creature is not
aware that men are great rascals, rob women of their rights, and bar
the avenues to wealth and fame against them. Sing the Iliad of your
woes, and it will fall on heedless ears. And, though you harp how
Juliet’s poetry flew up the kitchen-chimney and Portia’s eloquence
burnt out over the gridiron where her
----“red right hand grew raging hot,
Like Cranmer’s at the _steak_.”
she would quietly adjust the old black shawl (final remnant and
melancholy reminder of the gay _rebosa_) and count the days till the
next _fiesta_.
There are heights beyond her reach, and beyond your reach too, in spite
of mighty purpose. She does not strain after them, wearing herself to
skin and bone. While you, who have tasted bitter fruit from the tree of
knowledge, are ready to die in a losing struggle for the unattainable,
she loiters in happy valley, by good spirits tenanted, and in her easy
shoe wears the four-leaved clover of perpetual content.